Matte has identified several electronically available math books which are either in the public domain or available under free license conditions. In addition, Ray's work on identifying math books which are in the public domain by looking through the Library of Congress catalogue and comparing with the list of copyright renewals is slowly progressing — several hundred candidate works have been identified.
Identifying freely usable sources of mathematical information is important for projects like PlanetMath and the Hyperreal Dictionary of Mathematics because one can copy and adapt material without having to obtain permissions, puzzling over licensing terms, or worrying about where the line between fair use and infringement lies. Even though it would be possible for these projects to proceed using by referring only non-free copyrighted material, it is more difficult and takes longer than working with existing Public Domain resources.
We're working to establish connections and affiliations with individuals and organizations who can help us. Care to help us spread the word?
Would you like to participate in for-pay Q&A through PlanetMath, either as someone paying to get answers to your math questions, or as someone getting paid to answer questions?
See discussion here:
Thanks again for participating in this project guys. --jcorneli Sun Apr 17 22:06:20 2005 UTC
Still plenty of time for expanding on these things or adding brand new stuff. --jcorneli Thu Apr 21 05:18:25 2005 UTC
Can you explain why the UBI discussion, the quadrock grants, and the infopacks didn't make the published version? These seem like they would be good things to solicit input on. Especially the quadrock grants… --akrowne Mon Apr 25 21:02:24 UTC 2005
I assume it's because we didn't write anything about them. If we want to be sure that a certain item makes it into the bulletin, we should write something about it and not assume that Joe will write about it if we don't. --rspuzio 25 April 2005
Ray is correct. And the reason that the other "featurettes" did make it in is that I was (luckily) able to expand them without writing much. I had completely forgotten about the Bulletin on Sunday, and had to rush (as I was on my way out the door) to get it out today. I was glad to see the short article about Free Math Books - which helped give some substance to the publication.
I would have been happy to write more about the omitted topics, but I simply didn't have enough to say about them (especially because I was in a rush).
Basically the issue is that whatever you want to see in the bulletin, you have to put there. And note in addition that that I'm not "really" the editor either: I like editing things, but anyone can edit the bulletins if they want to.
My editorial decision this week was: It isn't good to include things without sufficient detail. In the future, if something makes a big impression on me, I may be moved to expand a one-liner into an article, but there is no guarantee of that (even if it is something I've been working on).
This ties into what Aaron was saying. Getting feedback (I've realized) can be sort of hard. You have to craft your statements carefully… and AFAIR, none of the bulletins have actually succeeded in getting feedback from anyone who wasn't already involved in AM. I do assume people are reading them, so my main interest is in making the mini-articles informative. If you think you can craft an article that will elicit feedback, great, but good luck.
The one-liners are still useful as a record of what we did. The fact that no one expanded the other items this week may be a useful thing to have on record too. Perhaps there we will (collectively) have more to say about these things next week. --jcorneli Tue Apr 26 00:14:47 2005 UTC
OK. Basically, I stopped writing about the items after the last time I did this, and you totally rewrote what I wrote. I figured (incorrectly) that you were taking over the entire process beyond the initial suggestion of items to include. --akrowne Tue Apr 26 03:41:27 UTC 2005
I think that to make the bulletins as good as possible we should all be listing, writing, rewriting, and discussing. The only thing I'm planning to do "different" is that I'll also post the article to PM (and maybe elsewhere if we think of anywhere else to post them). Remember: this is partly just an exercise to make sure that we all actually know what we're personally & collectively doing. It also enables us to "cheat" as we look back and try to recall what we've done. --jcorneli Tue Apr 26 15:21:22 2005 UTC